Tuesday, May 11, 2004

What's in a name?

I was listening to the radio this morning, and the local disc jockeys had on an expert in "nameology." The expert said that a person's name can have a lot to do with forming that person's personality. She did not attribute this to societal expectations for people with certain names or the socio-economic factors that usually accompany certain names. Rather, the expert said that pronunciation of words creates certain vibrations, and that these vibrations can impact our brains. Since we hear our own names quite often in our lives, the physical vibrations from the pronunciation of a name actually alter the person's personality. Sounds pretty weird to me, but the DJs and the test subjects that called in seemed convinced by the personality summaries that she offered.